


Alone

by sootonthecarpet



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Genre: Angst, Binge Drinking, Canon Compliant, Confessions, Emotional Baggage, Everyone Needs A Hug, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, Hugs, Intimacy, M/M, Men Crying, Sleep, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:10:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootonthecarpet/pseuds/sootonthecarpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Return Match, but before The Gift of the Emperor. Bunny is unexpectedly confronted by a drunken Raffles in the very early morning of a sleepless night.</p><p>(Beginning notes contain links to an audio version I recorded)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Now comes in audio form! Audio in the form of video, because I can't get tumblr to cooperate with uploading audio files. [The first video](http://sootonthecarpet.tumblr.com/post/56716403265/guess-who-reads-his-own-fanworks-now-me-video) [The second video](http://sootonthecarpet.tumblr.com/post/56718364015/shamelessly-reading-my-own-damn-fanfiction-video)

It was later than I desired, and colder as well. I was attempting to write, but I could not focus, and besides, my hand was unsteady for the chill in the air. I was only awake because I could not help it. I was not even writing something productive—I kept a diary, and I was busily moping in its margins. I confess there was some poetry. I was in a sorry state and rather the worse for wear.

As always, loneliness and morality were having at it in my chest like the mortal enemies they had, of late, become. Caught in that conflict, was it such a wonder that I could not sleep? What I took for an effect of the wind outside resolved itself into a tapping at my door, and I started so badly I upset my ink. Who could be here at this hour, and why? I was terrified, perhaps not unreasonably. I stood up and crept nearer the door, as I could not bear to sit still and wait for what I felt might be my demise. The knocking continued intermittently, and after a while abated. I just barely heard a groaning sigh that sounded of both annoyance and dejection. There was a rustling, a gentle thud, and a repeat of the sigh, a sound so completely pathetic I found myself incapable of further terror. I slipped my key into the lock and turned it, then opened the door a couple of inches. I was met, at this point, with some notable resistance. I pushed a little harder, and the resistance moved away. I pushed the door the rest of the way open. Outlined dimly in what little light there was, just barely visible, lying curled on the floor of the hallway, was A. J. Raffles! I started rather violently, trying to reconcile everything I knew of Raffles with the sort of man who would lie on the floor outside of my rooms and make unhappy groaning noises when I did not let him enter. He looked up at me and I easily recognized him as a very drunk man. That did not really add any more sense to the matter. “Raffles, what are you doing here?” I asked, dropping to my knees on the floor. He made eye contact, and his throat worked noiselessly for several seconds.

“I rather hoped you would let me in,” he said at last. It was barely intelligible.

“Has somebody drugged you?” I asked, reminded of the last time I had heard him like this. I gripped his lapels and unceremoniously dragged him inside. I heard a few noises of weak protest. Once I got the door shut and locked behind him, I stooped again and hauled him to his knees. “Come on,” I said.

“I can walk. Was trying to rest,” he said. His words were slurred badly. His head flopped onto my shoulder, but he was not lying—he supported most of his own weight. I tipped him into a chair, in which he lolled aimlessly.

“What are you doing here?”

“I felt sick,” he complained. “Didn’t want to be alone. So. I got a cab and came here.” He looked up at me. “You’ve got whiskey, of course; where do you keep it?” 

I got up and put on the light, ignoring him. Surely he wasn’t serious, I assured myself. A mumbled “Ah, here of course,” and the sound of sloshing rapidly disillusioned me. I turned to look at him. “That’s my whiskey,” I said. “Haven’t you had enough of your own?”

He blinked at me fuzzily. “Not a bit of it,” he said sternly and unsteadily. He finished his glass and amended, “Not a bit of having had enough, Bunny. As you so astutely divined, I _have_ had _quite a bit_.” He stared down at his hands, lower lip screwed up in distress. “I prefer to command my own ambiguity!” he exclaimed, burying his face in his palms for several seconds and shuddering. He seemed to be getting himself under control when he looked up at last. He reached, again, for my whiskey, and I made a protesting sound. “Oh, I’ve given you enough of mine,” he said, sounding bitter and sullen and perhaps sad. I bit my lip and watched him in confusion as he continued to drink, not speaking to me for several minutes. I grew quite uneasy, and at last I left him to get myself a drink of water. He was making me uncomfortable, and while I very much wished to drink, I did not wish to drink around him while he was in that state, much as I felt he might be easier to deal with were I less sober.

I looked at him over my shoulder. He made eye contact and gradually extricated himself from his chair, sliding to the floor with an almost challenging expression. I returned to him and took the whiskey from the table. “You’ve had enough of this,” I insisted, trying not to sound tremulous. He knocked the back of his hand against my ankle once. I took the bottle and set it down on a shelf, started to return, doubled back, poured some for myself, drank it, and walked back to him. He groaned a little, and I crouched by his side. “You’ll only get colder and dustier if you stay down there,” I told him quietly, slipping an arm around his chest. “If you can’t stay put in a chair, you’d best take the sofa.” He put his hand flat against the side of my face. His fingers tensed a few times, in rhythm with his breathing, which was becoming harsh and sharply defined. “Something the matter, old chap?” I asked him, trying to sound gay instead of horrified as it dawned on me that he might be sobbing. I dismissed the thought as quickly as I could, gently pulling him into a sitting position braced up against my shoulder. He shook his head, but by the shaking of the rest of him, it seemed evident he was shaking his head in distress, not denial. “Would you like to tell me about it?” I prompted, still doing my best to keep up the front that nothing at all was wrong. It was a front I have never been good at and often had cause to employ. His hands clenched in the front of my nightshirt.

“Oh god,” he choked.

“The nausea?” I asked. 

“No—yes… no, it’s not the nausea, confound it!” he cried, muscles going rigid. Then a kind of shuddering relaxation ran through him—one of my hands was flat against his stomach, and I felt this movement clearly—and he fell forward onto my chest, sobbing weakly.

“Raffles,” I exclaimed in a tiny breath.

“Don’t bother,” he moaned, but I confess I had no idea what he was telling me not to bother with.

“You shouldn’t stay on the floor.” I echoed myself, completely at a loss. He had gone completely limp in my arms, and I had not the strength to lift him. I could not stop myself from drawing him into my lap.

He whimpered and swallowed harshly. The sobbing ceased, but his breath was shaky still.

“Do you think you can get up?”

He tensed his legs where they were curled against my side.

“Good… try it?”

There was a still silence punctuated only by his wet breathing.

“Don’t want to,” he said. Half obstinate, half resigned.

I sat and thought for several seconds.

“Then I don’t see why you should,” said I at last. I shifted a bit backwards until I could lean against the sofa. He looked up at me with such an expression that my breath caught itself on a lump in my throat. I pressed my lips to his forehead before they could betray me with words I was not prepared to speak. It took a little effort, but I made it into a kiss before drawing back. He was still making the same expression, but its power had diminished a little. He blinked quickly a few times. Tears fell. I sighed heavily. “This is unlike you,” I told him. “I do not understand.” I was, in fact, growing more frightened by the minute. “Am I to take it, at this point, that you are in this condition intentionally and by your own hand?”

“That is the general effect,” he said, with a weak hiccup. 

“Can you tell me why you did it?”

“Can _you_?” he asked bitterly. “No, that’s not it,” he added with a piteous sigh. “To be— _hic_ —quite fair, it was partially an accident.” He rested his forehead on my chest for the duration of an unsteady sob.

“You must give me more to go on, old chap.”

“There isn’t any.”

Even I could tell he was lying. “Raffles?”

“Mm.”

“What troubles you so?”

“Why must I be interrogated?” He cried. “Don’t I let you go on in peace when you’ve gone and gotten drunk at the Albany?!”

“This is different,” I insisted, but I was not so resolute. “You don’t do this, Raffles, not like I do.“

“Please,” he begged in a gasp. I dropped the matter at once. His curly head rested against my shoulder once again. I could not bear how lonely he managed to look, even sitting on my lap, so I wrapped my arms firmly around him. I felt there must be something reassuring for me to do, even if it was only a hug. I seemed to have hit upon the proper reaction, for after a silence of twenty-four minutes—I watched the time go by on the clock—he groped in his pocket for a handkerchief and did his best with it.

He looked up at me with a gaze that was still worryingly melancholy. “I’m alright, Bunny,” he told me quietly. “I think I shall move to the sofa now.”

He stretched himself out on it. I took this lull as an opportunity to light a fire and fetch a few blankets.

“A glass of water would be much appreciated,” he prompted quietly. I put one of the blankets over him and obliged. After he drank, he lay back down and pulled the blanket up until he was only a mess of curls surrounding a pale and reddened face.

“AJ,” I said, and then frowned at the slip. An hour earlier, I would have panicked. He looked over at me blandly, and I tugged my blanket closer around my shoulders. “Will you stay until the morning?” I asked him, feeling just a little braver.

“Bunny, I would like nothing more,” he said, and there was more than a little passion in his tone. I half felt he meant it, and that terrified me.

“Well, I’d hate to send you home in your condition,” I assured him. He made a small noise of assent and closed his eyes. I watched him.

Part of me did not want him here.

He was the perfect embodiment everything I wanted to leave behind, crime and glamour and the sort of feelings that can ruin even the most reputable of figures.

Something at the back of my mind insisted that I throw him out, that things had gone far enough. That I should not have let him in. That ‘far enough’ had come a long, long time ago.

A greater, more twisted part of me accepted this as an accurate analysis and continued on in spite of it. 

I had almost worked up the courage to ask him to leave when I realized he was looking at me now. He had a talent for seeing my thought process in my expressions, and I had been doing nothing to mask them. He had been watching me as I decided to make him leave. He did not take the opportunity to disagree, to plead or to connive or to insult. He only looked at me. Quiet and pathetic and just a bit desperate, but not surprised in the least.

I could not do it, I simply could not bring myself. I dropped my head into my hands, shuddering. I peered up at him without moving. He smiled at me sadly. I knew that smile, I had seen it before. I yelled an oath and slammed my fist down on the armrest. “Every time I try to leave, you find a way to draw me back in!”

His eyes opened wider. “Bunny, you must be quieter,” he said quickly. “Or we shall be overheard.”

I cursed again and fell silent.

“You can go to the devil,” I mumbled. “Stay the night by all means, but go to the devil come morning.”

“It is morning already. Shall I take you to the devil with me?” He was smiling, and there was nothing of sadness in it this time. Had he been sober, I might have tried to knock out a few of his teeth. Instead, I drew up my knees and turned my face into my chair and away from him. I could still feel his eyes on me, so I pulled my blanket up over my head. I must have looked a right fool. 

I am not sure which one of us fell to sobbing first. I suppose it was me. The blanket fell away, and I clutched my own legs for support. I am sure it was only because I was tired that I broke so, but for quite a while I was crying so badly that I was hardly able to breathe. He calmed himself in only about the amount of time it took me to get really worked up. I envied him, and tried to ignore his presence and at least get a good cry out of this horrible experience. I could not fathom why he should be crying, anyway. It was not exactly his habit to do such things, particularly not twice in one night.

After a while I realized he was standing beside me. I looked up sullenly to find that he was offering me his handkerchief. I refused, as it was still damp from his own, earlier weeping, and I was not certain I could bear it. He stooped and put an arm around my shoulders. I think my plan was to punch him, but I hugged him close instead. Then his mouth was on mine, and I pushed him away. “Not now,” I choked. “Not now, please.” I pushed my head under his chin, where I could be close but completely out of reach of that sort of display. I sobbed pathetically for what felt like hours. I ran out of tears and I ran out of breath, and I sobbed still. I willed him to hug me tighter, but he kept his arms loose, leaving me room to draw back completely if I regretted what was happening. This, I think, served to undo me further. “I have to get a drink,” I said, shifting back. His hand fell to my forearm, and I looked up, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.

“Please don’t,” he said, and eventually continued, “I think that between us, we have drunk quite enough as it is. Let it be water, just this once.”

I choked on air and seized his hand.

“Raffles,” I said.

He was watching me with red-rimmed eyes.

I had nothing further to say, so I let the sentence end where it had started. 

“Mistakes were always much less serious with you around,” he told me. “I’ve gotten us out of a scrape or two, haven’t I.”

I looked up at him miserably.

He sat on the sofa, looking exhausted. Hesitantly, I rose and sat next to him.

“I miss you,” he admitted. “I feel better with you around, and I want you back.”

“I shan’t,” I said firmly.

“You’ve no source of income, Bunny?”

“Please don’t try to convince me. It aches like an open wound.”

“You yourself have put it there.”

“So I did.”

He found my hand in silence. I was grateful.

“I know you would be trying to convince me right now, if you were more sober.”

He shrugged. 

I was glad he was drunk. To be pulled into something by him was horrible and wracking and something in me begged for him to do it again, to bring me back to the life I was trying to escape once and for all. I detested my situation. I detested _Raffles_.

“I think I love you,” I complained.

“Bunny, I am quite sure of it.”

“Bugger.”

He laughed softly. In a state of utter misery, I joined him in the laughter without a second thought.

When the laughter left, a hollowness and nausea took its place inside of me.

“I haven’t the energy to cry again,” I murmured sadly and drew up my knees again. His hand crept into my hair and I sniffled weakly, leaning into the caress. For a few minutes, it was the most soothing feeling I had ever felt. It stopped helping after a while. I gave up and kissed him, putting my arms around his neck. I was seized with a worry that he might sublimate before me and leave me all alone with this terrible mess of emotions. His arms went around my ribs and drew me nearer. After a while, I pressed up against him, not wanting so much as an inch of separation, not now. He sighed unsteadily against my lips. I moved my mouth to his neck instead, committing to memory every gasp, every aborted movement. I unbuttoned his waistcoat and untucked his shirt, slipping my hands beneath it just to feel his skin. He pushed his hips against mine unsteadily, drawing groans from me, and I tipped us back until we were lying down, wanting to feel his weight on my chest. I undid his collar, and then I think I hesitated, for he was whispering into my ear, “Don’t worry, it’s only kissing, please don’t stop,” and I was gently biting at his neck, and he was shaking, and then he made a weak, breathless sound and went perfectly still.

I raised my head and looked at him. His cheeks were pink and his eyes gently closed.

“Raffles—“ I began.

“Don’t speak, not yet,” he said quietly. I obliged him, pressing my lips to his forehead. 

After many long minutes spent just breathing, he raised himself on his elbows. “I want to clean up,” he told me, voice rasping in his throat a bit.

“Of course,” I answered in a quiet tone. He stood unsteadily and left me for the bathroom. I sighed and sat up, pulling the blankets back around me and curling up. I was crying again when he got back, and he nodded his understanding and sat next to me. Eventually, I offered him some of my blanket, and he joined me beneath it.

“Will you tell me why you drank so much…?”

“I am not so sure I can,” he admitted. “I had the first drink to be polite, the second rather later on and because I found myself uncomfortable, the third because I thought of you and was angry… After that I am no longer clear on the matter.”

“And…”

“I came to see you because I was nauseous and lonely. That is all there is to the matter.”

“I don’t think I quite believe you.”

He swallowed thickly. “Thanks,” he said to that. He hid his face in my hair. I think he was unable to reply further.

“Come to bed,” I asked him quietly. “I feel that there is nothing more to say.”

He and I got up and walked to my room. I wordlessly offered him a nightshirt. He changed into it and got into bed next to me.

“There,” he mumbled, running a hand up my spine. I am glad he did not comment on the weight I had lost without our robberies to support me. His hand moved to my leg. “Are you sure you don’t want—“

“No,” I admitted, “But I am definitely not sure that I do,” I told him, which was the end of that.

He sighed and drew me closer.

“I am still making you leave in the morning,” I whispered.

“To go to the devil?”

“To let me breathe.”

I drew away from him, but he relinquished me only reluctantly. I slept with my back to him, but when I awoke, we were wrapped in each other’s arms, and I was watching him sleep. I let him have this—let him wake up to me. There was no harm done if he didn’t want it, and if he did, I suppose I owed him a favour anyway. His eyes opened slowly, and he moved his mouth without words.

“I hope you slept well,” I said truthfully.

“I did,” he said, with the tone of the same sad groan I had heard from outside my door.

I handed his crumpled tie to him as he dressed, and smoothed down his lapels when he put on his jacket.

“Drink a lot of water,” I told him.

He shrugged, lacking anything more to say. I kissed his fingertips before showing him out the door, and I closed it behind him fully hoping and expecting that we would never meet again.

**Author's Note:**

> whoops I wrote the whole thing in one go, I sure hope there aren't any typos because I'm posting this shit unedited


End file.
